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Potato

I know the idea of a purple meal slightly turns some peoples stomachs – but when you find yourself with a pile of purple potatoes, why not just dive in head first?

This is a real simple breakfast/brunch recipe. It will work with any type of potato and you can add anything you want – as long as you keep it simple. There’s nothing to bind everything together here so adding too much complexity will put the integrity of your pancakes at peril (meaning they will fall apart – at which point you could make a hash).

I know the idea of a purple meal slightly turns some peoples stomachs – but when you find yourself with a pile of purple potatoes, why not just dive in head first?

This is a real simple breakfast/brunch recipe. It will work with any type of potato and you can add anything you want – as long as you keep it simple. There’s nothing to bind everything together here so adding too much complexity will put the integrity of your pancakes at peril (meaning they will fall apart – at which point you could make a hash).

I know the idea of a purple meal slightly turns some peoples stomachs – but when you find yourself with a pile of purple potatoes, why not just dive in head first?

This is a real simple breakfast/brunch recipe. It will work with any type of potato and you can add anything you want – as long as you keep it simple. There’s nothing to bind everything together here so adding too much complexity will put the integrity of your pancakes at peril (meaning they will fall apart – at which point you could make a hash).

I know the idea of a purple meal slightly turns some peoples stomachs – but when you find yourself with a pile of purple potatoes, why not just dive in head first?

This is a real simple breakfast/brunch recipe. It will work with any type of potato and you can add anything you want – as long as you keep it simple. There’s nothing to bind everything together here so adding too much complexity will put the integrity of your pancakes at peril (meaning they will fall apart – at which point you could make a hash).

I’m a big fan of combining curry with potatoes and tomatoes. This curry, leek and potato soup combines them together in a bowl that will keep you warm on the coldest days of winter.

The ‘stock’ for this soup is a combination of tomato sauce, beer and milk. While it may sound like a motley combination at first glance I think you’ll find that the use of potatoes form a bridge that connect these strange bedfollows together in a way that makes sense. I prefer a lager (often using pilsner) for this soup.

I thought it might be good to remind myself that you don’t have to preserve everything (this was a tough lesson in 2009 when I realized I didn’t eat a single fresh pea and had canned every pea I had that year). Here’s a quick way to turn a single meal into two separate dishes using Wild Leeks (a simple fish dinner followed by a different take on potato salad).

Start by giving your leeks a good wash. They often have an awkward enzyme (it looks like a fusion of dirt and the slimy layer of an onion that lies under the skin and on top of the flesh). It’s easy to pull off.

Break the leek into its components (I placed the roots in a smaller bowl and placed them on a shelf in the warmest part of my kitchen to dry – once complete I will remove the roots from the tip of the bulb and add it to the compost):

We recently wrote about the ultimate way to roast potatoes – a quick parboil to start the outsides cooking followed by a tumble in the colander to rough them up was all that was needed to take our potatoes from decent to exceptional. We received a comment from Amy who suggested to parboil new potatoes, smash them slightly and then roast them the same way. We just couldn`t resist:

I have never been shy about sharing my follies here. It`s not so much that I`m proud of how I miss some of the more obvious tricks in the kitchen – it`s the enduring thought that if just one person learns the trick from me sharing it, then it`s all worthwhile.

I called my Father at 7:30AM this week to exclaim that I had found the ultimate way to roast potatoes. He responded by telling me my trick. I really have to ask more questions of those around me. 🙂

I used to roast potatoes from raw. Peel (optional), chop, add oil and roast. They were good but the outsides never got crunchy enough – or the insides were overcooked and dry.

I spent a year discovering Canada in the early 90s. Part of the journey was 4 months of bus travel where I travelled approximately 27,713 kilometers by myself on a Greyhound bus. It was fantastic.

I was on a tight budget on the bus (about $15 a day for food, lodging and fun) and I didn`t eat red meat or pork at the time. I recall craving mashed potatoes for weeks – they are all but impossible to buy when you are a travelling pseudo vegetarian on a budget as they were generally only served as a side dish with a hunk of roast.

The University of Victoria was an exception to this (they sold them economically by the scoop and served on scratched plates sitting on plastic trays). I had 5 scoops to start before returning to double my order on my first night there. On the second day I returned for another 10 scoops and my craving was sated. I suppose I was like a hybrid mashed-potato vampire….

I was on Twitter on Saturday night when I saw Joel Solish (he also has a great website called Community Foodist) mentioned he was cooking “Keller’s Scallion Cakes.” I was only online for a few minutes and didn’t have time to chat but I reached for my copy of AdHoc at Home and confirmed the recipe was in there.

If you’re looking for more info on Thomas Keller, I posted my impressions of an lengthy interview I had the chance of seeing live this winter here. AdHoc at home is intended to be practical recipes for the home chef.

When it comes to potatoes I am a sucker for eating them crispy: fried, hashed, chipped and even the top layer of scalloped potatoes all get me excited. I was thrilled with the results of yesterday’s breakfast though there’s a few touched below that I think makes our approach a little different than shown in the book (in part because we don’t have a salad spinner).